| NOT THAT SHOCKED: Bellock says Illinois should never
have stopped its Medicaid review. |
Republican state Rep. Patti Bellock, the House GOP point person on Medicaid,
told Illinois Watchdog she isn't all that surprised Illinois was spending
money on patients who are no longer living.
"We should have never stopped the (private review of Medicaid). It was the
most successful thing any state has ever done to stop fraud," Bellock said.
The state found more than 50 percent of those Medicaid cases examined were
not eligible for coverage, but Illinois ended its private review of the
nearly 3 million people enrolled in Medicaid earlier this year.
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees sued the
state, claiming it should be handling the multimillion-dollar job of
scrubbing Illinois' Medicaid rolls.
Bellock said it was "pure politics" that led Gov. Pat Quinn to give AFSCME
the job — and the jobs — of taking over the Medicaid review.
[to top of second column] |
The revelation that the state is paying for dead Medicaid
patients didn't, however, come from that review.
The Associated Press discovered the payments.
Top Democrats say they are "concerned," but they also believe some of the
people may have been alive when they went to a doctor and simply
died before the bill was submitted.
Bellock said Illinois will likely never know, because the review of
Medicaid has been sacrificed to politics.
"We should have never stopped (the private review)," Bellock said.
"It was huge and we should have continued. If we don't pursue waste,
there is going to be more fraud."
[This
article courtesy of
Illinois Watchdog.]
Contact Benjamin Yount at
Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find
him on Twitter: @BenYount.
Click here to respond to the editor about this
article.
|
